It astonishes me, Cube, that you think conspiracies don't happen. They're not uncommon and if you read the business pages of the most conservative newspaper, you become quite familiar with them. In truth, you don't read them, do you?
There seem to be a lot of corporations actually being charged with conspiracy, for conspiracies not to exist. Just off the top of my head.
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And more to the point, real behind closed doors stuff.
HealthSouth, a leading HMO....
According to the information, members of HealthSouth’s accounting staff would meet to discuss ways to artificially inflate HealthSouth’s earnings in order to meet Wall Street expectations. These meetings were known as “family” meetings and the attendees were known as the “family.” At the meetings, “family” members discussed how members of the accounting staff would falsify HealthSouth’s books to fill the “gap” or “hole” and meet the desired earnings. The fraudulent postings used to fill the “gap” or “hole” were referred to as the “dirt.”
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Oh, and perhaps you should drop this judge a note and let him know conspiracies don't happen:
"Monsanto et al . . . Judge Allows Antitrust Case Against Seed Producers" by David Barboza New York Times 24 Sep 2003
CHICAGO, Sept. 23—A federal judge on Friday let proceed an antitrust case that accused the Monsanto Company and other big agricultural seed giants of conspiring to control the world's market in genetically modified crops.
But Judge Sippel allowed the antitrust portion of the case to proceed, possibly setting the stage for a court battle over whether the world's biggest producers of agricultural seeds got together in the late 1990's to fix prices and control the market for those valuable biotechnology seeds, which are now planted on more than 100 million acres worldwide.
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Archer Daniel Midlands? “Rats In The Grain” is a 400+ page study of the trial of three ADM executives arising from the 1990s price fixing scandal that saw the company plead guilty and be fined $US100 million (followed by similar scale fines in Canada and Europe, also for price fixing). The company had secretly met with its Japanese “competitors” and rigged the price of lysine, an animal feed additive. The same happened with citric acid and high fructose corn syrup, but no charges were ever brought in relation to them. Following the settlement of the civil case, three senior executives – Michael Andreas, Terry Wilson and Mark Whitacre – faced criminal charges arising out of the same international price fixing conspiracy
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